La Grande Ourse et le Taureau Apis

De Callatay, Godefroid [UCL]

From a literary joke on the name of Epaphos - a famous bull of Greek mythology - in Aratos' description of the constellation Bootes-Arctophylax, "the Guard of the Bear" (Phaenomena, vv. 91-93), one is led to wonder why, a long time before the Romans identified the seven stars with the Septem Triones, the Greater Bear could already be associated witht he figure of a bull. This article seeks at answering this question by investigating some of the documents, from Classical as well as from Ancient Egypptian iconography, which show us taht, from a very early period, this portion of the heavenly vault had been occupied by the Egyptian bull Apis, later identified with the Greek Epaphos.